Blending Into The Shadows
by theSunlitEarth
Summary: They didn't shout "This is a robbery!" like they had always done in the movies Clint had snuck a peek at from the staircase late at night when his parents thought he was in bed. Instead, the men in the bank just yelled at everyone to get on the floor.


When he was a child, Clint Barton hadn't been the best at anything. It had taken six months longer for him to begin reading than it had for his classmates. His parents, when they had still been alive, had encouraged him to play the piano but his pudgy, six year old fingers had hit enough wrong notes to cause his teacher to advise him to take up the triangle instead. His singing voice was off pitch and his writing was unimpressive, to say the least. His average grade in school was a C+.

He had always felt bad about his lack of talent. His parents were impressive people, at least to their only child. They weren't rich, but they were well off. His father was a tall and handsome man with kind eyes and a little streak of grey on his right temple. His mother was beautiful and had a smile that could light up a whole room, as Clint's father always said. Every night his father told him that no one in the whole universe loved him as much as his father and mother did.

When he was seven, he and his parents had stopped off at the bank; his father had business to take care of. He waited patiently with his parents at the desk while his father passed cheques and other official looking documents to the lady behind the desk. His father was just putting away his bank card when a loud bang echoed through the cavernous building. Clint turned around and saw two men wearing old-fashioned hockey masks standing in front of the door, brandishing military-grade machine guns.

They didn't shout "This is a robbery!" like they had always done in the movies Clint had snuck a peek at from the staircase late at night when his parents thought he was in bed. Instead, the men in the bank just yelled at everyone to get on the floor. While they were briefly preoccupied, Clint's mother pushed him toward a desk.

"Hide," she whispered.

Clint obeyed. He slid into the shadows, pressing his back against the wooden front of the desk. He may not have been good at singing or reading, but blending into the shadows was his specialty.

But he couldn't resist his own morbid curiosity, so he carefully poked his head around the edge of the desk. His mother and father were lying on their stomachs, hands behind their heads as per the robber's instructions. Clint could see the lights from the police cars outside dancing and reflecting off the glass doors of the bank. Time slowed down as he watched one of the men approach his mother. He passed the desk Clint was hiding under and the boy caught overwhelming scent of cigarettes with a faint underlying hint of pine needles.

"Hand over your jewelry and money, and don't try to hide anything." The man's voice was like sandpaper.

Clint noticed his mother's fingers shake as she took off her modest gold earrings and matching necklace on the floor beside her along with two fifty dollar bills from her wallet.

"That's all I have." Her voice caught on the last word and Clint could tell she was trying not to cry. She turned her head slightly and caught his eye through her tangled blonde hair. He only recognized the love that he had seen there every night of his short life as far back as he could remember. The terror, that was new.

The man picked up his loot and looked over the woman lying on the ground lecherously. Clint didn't understand the look, but he knew it was bad. He wished he could punch the man in the face.

"You're pretty. It's really a shame," he said in his sandpaper voice. He slipped a small pistol out of a holster and pointed it at Clint's mother. Clint saw her shaking form still as the man emptied his pistol into her head. He knelt down and slipped a band of gold encrusted with diamonds off her left ring finger. She had forgotten to give him her wedding ring and she had died for it.

Clint hadn't even heard the anguished cries of his father as he stared at his mother's still form. He kept his eyes away from her head. The man casually refilled his pistol, not caring or knowing that he had just taken away a young boy's mother.

Clint pushed himself back into the shadows of the desk, his eyes wide and dry. His hands were clenched into fists around the material of his pants. The little finger of his right hand had nothing protecting the nail from digging into the flesh of his hand, but the boy didn't notice the drops of bright red blood that fell from his hand to the dark carpet.

He didn't know how long he sat there; it could have been hours, or days. At one point, the police cut the power to the bank and the room was plunged into blackness. The gunshots didn't stop. Clint's ears were ringing; he had lost count of how many bullets were fired, how many screams were cut short.

Then a pair or hands pulled him out from under the desk. The owner of the hands, a man in a black S.W.A.T. suit, carried him from the bank. Clint hid his face in the fabric of the man's suit, inhaling the smell of fabric softener instead of the stench of blood that had been his constant companion for what felt like his whole life. He squeezed his eyes shut and the tears finally came, soaking through the black fabric under his cheek.

Outside the bank was almost too quiet. The lights still flashed chaotically, but there was little speech. A police office carefully explained to Clint that he was very lucky to be one of the three survivors of the robbery turned terrorist attack. The bad men were gone, killed by a sniper. And the man was very sorry, but his parents were not the other two people who had survived. Clint knew that. The robbers had killed his mother before his eyes and would not tolerate his father's cries.

Fifty-six people died that night, but Clint Barton was not one of them.

**This was originally going to go on through the rest of Clint's life, but I felt like it wasn't going to have as strong an impact, so this is a ONESHOT. Review, if you like :)**

**~TheSunlitEarth**


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